According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute via this Wikipedia page:
in 2009 the US spent 6 times the next biggest spender, China.
Defending isn’t the expensive part – it is sending our military overseas for foreign wars.
We could spend a lot less and keep invaders out of our country, but to maintain our world wide presence takes a lot of money.
It’s most certainly not necessary and the simple reason for it is that most politicians are too cowardly to suggest cutting it significantly (i.e. never more than one specific program that doesn’t benefit his/her state). This is because they will be called “soft on terrorism” or “soft on defense” and for the most part, in America, logic cannot trump being called “soft on terrorism” or “soft on crime.” It’s why police budgets only rise, prison sentences only get longer, and more and more acts become felonies. Anyone who opposes them will be called “soft on crime” along with a bunch of blabber about “the children” and there’s no way to counter that - facts and logic cannot trump such an accusation.
I actually think we could spend half what we’re spending on defense and get twice as much for our money if we’d just cut out the crony b.s. and no-bid contracts and perpetual wars. Legalizing and taxing drugs at a reasonable rate (along with ending our extremely wasteful and corrupting ‘drug war’) could fund a very strong American military all by itself.
Eisenhower’s departing speech about the Military-Industrial Complex (MIC) went unheeded. Military contractors are situated in so many congressional districts across the country that any attempt to limit military spending is going to raise the ire of federal contractors and their Congress critters nation-wide.
The MIC truly is a human-made cancer in this society.
Oh good…another ‘we don’t need no stinkin’ military!’ debate. It’s been so long since the last one that I was starting to pine away.
Well, here is a Wiki article that shows expenditure for defense by country using 2009 data, so it seems fairly close. Might be different this fiscal year.
‘Is this really necessary’ is a question in itself, and get’s into whether or not you think the US should continue to make strategic military commitments world wide. I don’t know the answer to that.
As to the proper ratio, you have to ask yourself…does the US have military commitments that are 3 or 4 times that of, say, China (since you used that example in your OP)? 5 times? 6? 20? I’d say that it’s closer to 20 times, considering that China does not even attempt to project military power on a global scale, merely contenting itself with being a regional military power. As they have attempted to increase their commitments beyond their region, unsurprisingly, their military budget has increased. If they try and have similar commitments to what the US currently has, my guess is that their defense budget will be comparable to ours…probably higher, actually, since they will have to build much of it from scratch (a lot of our initial military structure came out of WWII, so it was more a matter of maintaining what we had, with incremental upgrades…all of the ‘corporate knowledge’, so to speak, was already with us).
Again…whether the US SHOULD be trying to maintain military commitments on a global scale is certainly debatable. If not us then someone (or someones) will do it, but that doesn’t mean that we necessarily have to be the one to carry the water. But it’s silly to try and compare what the US spends to what other countries who don’t have anything close to our commitments spend…it’s an apples to pizza comparison. Like asking why Po-Dunk North Dakota’s 3 man police force doesn’t spend as much as LA or New York on SWAT type capabilities.
-XT
That’s not what the OP is saying. He wants to, at least, keep 2/3 of what we now have. That’s a lot more than 0.
As for the OP, I say yes. Cut it to the bone, I say. And then cut some more!
We are still fighting the cold war and planning on being the world’s police force. We need an exit plan for everyplace we have our troops stationed on foreign soil.
Yes, I know…it was a ‘joke’…a ‘joke’ based on the past trajectory of threads like this one, and one that uses a hefty dollop of sarcasm and hyperbole. I answered the OP’s question in the rest of my post, that didn’t have the sarcasm and hyperbole in it.
-XT
Missed the edit window.
And should we also cede our various overseas commitments? I ask out of curiosity, because the reason we have troops stationed throughout the world is so that we can respond militarily to threats not just to us and our strategic interests but to any of our myriad allies. By pulling back we pretty much leave any sort of timely response to any attacks against any of our or our allies strategic or actual resources or possessions out the window (or, if we cut to the bone and beyond, any sort of response at all to any but the most dire of threats), and send a message that we are basically ceding the defense of such to regional powers…or no one/anyone who cares to do so. If you are good with this then that’s fine…I’m good with it as well. But there should be a clear understanding of what the consequences could be to our interests and the interests of our allies, and the fact that once we go down that path there probably won’t be any going back, and there may be a lot of unexpected consequences down the road.
-XT
Then you ultimately don’t intend to win such engagements, and ought not make any such promises. if you simply want to ignore all foreign commitments and isolate ourselves, then argue that. But ultimately we don’t because it was tried and resulted (several times) in expensive problems in blood and treasure.
It’s a basic reality. The ability to project military force is part of a nation’s influence.
Not just in a threatening way. Nations that are threatened look to powerful nations for alliances.
And politics will not tolerate a vacuum. If the United States decided to withdraw from world affairs, other powers would fill the void.
I’m not a jingoist and I’m not a blind patriot. But I think that the United States has a basically good system and acts as well as a world power can realistically hope to. So I feel that a world where America is the dominant power is a better world than any of the likely alternatives - not only for America but for the rest of the world as well.
Which engagements and what promises?
When was it tired? If you mean Vietnam, we had no way of “winning”. Only fighting forever.
But here’s the thing. Our exist strategy need only take into account the client state’s ability to counter the threat, or other states to share an equal part of the burden. When is SK going to be able to fend for itself? Never, if we’re always going to be there to foot the bill. Expand NATO and make these defense actions multilateral. It doesn’t have to be us who are always doing everything.
We could spend half as much and still be the dominant power.
It was very eloquent and all but I still find it interesting how Eisenhower of all people is constantly, reverently cited by anti-war types. It’d be like if Bush warned the nation about politicians starting costly wars based on lies and jingoistic propaganda. Guilty conscience much?
I would dispute that. Our military is stretched thin right now. I don’t see how we could cut it in half and do the same job.
Obviously there’s always going to be some inefficiency. But anyone who’s claiming that half of military spending is inefficiency is dreaming. You cut military spending in half and you’re making real cuts.
Another description is to say the U.S. spent just about the same as the rest of the world added together.
Setting aside the question of how much military strength U.S. needs, much of the spending is for things the Pentagon doesn’t even want, e.g. domestic bases kept open to please particular Congressmen, pork barrel-wise. There are also some expensive advanced weapons that are neither cost-effective, nor well-suited for today’s wars.
That’s not a dispute. That’s a non sequitur. We could do half of what we’re doing and still be the dominant power. That was your original argument-- that we need to be the dominant power. Unless you meant we had to be the super-duper-uber-dominant power…
Not inefficiencies. Things that we don’t need to do. And I’m not saying cut it in half tomorrow. I’m saying make a plan, long term, to do so.
Actually this part isn’t true. There are now sizable areas with no local police force. Not small country counties either, cities.
No we don’t need to be the super-duper-uber-dominant power. But as I posted we’re stretched thin right now. That means we don’t have the excess you’re implying exists.
If we cut our military in half we’re going to have to reduce our commitments. Maybe tell Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan that they’re on their own. Maybe withdraw from NATO. Maybe declare we won’t send any troops to the Middle East.
You think the balance of power won’t shift if we do any of these things? How long before China or Russia or Iran or India seeks to take advantage of our withdrawal and start threatening weaker neighbours?
Or are you suggesting we maintain the same diplomatic posture only without the military strength to back it up? Because foreign intelligence will see through that quick. We try bluffing other powers and somebody will call us on it. Then we’re fighting a real war and those are a lot costlier than a standing military.
And as I posted earlier, we’re trying to do too much. That’s why we’re “stretched thin”.
If Korea and Japan need our defense, they should pay for it. If they’re not willing to pay for it, then I don’t want to. As for NATO, why would we have to withdraw? If we cut our defense spending in half, we’d still have a much larger military then every other NATO member.
The balance of power might shift, but what is so magical about that balance right now? We are the super-duper-uber dominant power, and we’d simply become the dominant one. And we’d make our allies shoulder more of the burden, so some of that shifing would be to countries who are our allies. And then maybe the rest of the world would start hating us less.
Much of the military budget is tied to paying soldiers (because unlike say China all US soldiers are volunteers and are paid well not to benefits for veterans) and also this is because the US has tremendous force projection capabiltiies that other powers lack and we have a tremendous naval force,